


William and the Fond Reunion

by halotolerant



Category: Just William - Richmal Crompton
Genre: Childhood Sweethearts, F/F, Femslash, Gender Roles, Love Confessions, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 02:31:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2834897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The return of the Slate family to the village would not, in the normal way of things, have interested William. But then he heard that they had a Javanese ceremonial dagger, and, just then, William desperately needed a Javanese ceremonial dagger. </p><p>That Honeysuckle Slate and his sister Ethel had a complicated past, and many feelings about meeting each other again after years apart, was not of interest to him. But in his quest for the dagger, it would become relevant indeed, and help him realise there was a bit more to his sister than he had thought.</p><p>Could William secure his dagger and sort out his sister's reunion? William certainly thought so...</p>
            </blockquote>





	William and the Fond Reunion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KannaOphelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KannaOphelia/gifts).



> Richmal Crompton is the Queen, and I merely attempt to imitate in tribute. KannaOphelia, I loved your prompt and couldn't resist writing this treat in one of my favourite canons, I hope it's something like what you had in mind. 
> 
> **Note/Additional Warning** : In the style of the original books, set in the early twentieth century, there are old-fashioned and colonial attitudes to other cultures and appropriation of other cultures' artefacts, and use of period typical language to describe other cultures and peoples. Also plentiful period-typical gender-policing.

In the usual way of things, the retun of the Slates to the large mock-tudor mansion known to the village as ‘Catkins’, which had stood empty for nearly seven years, would have been of little interest to William, who regarded the comings and goings of adult society with the disdain that adult society, in its turn, regarded many points which were to him of great importance.

 So it was with the ceremonial dagger.

It was because of the ceremonial dagger that the Slate’s return captured William’s interest. Had any of the adult members of the Brown household been _au fait_ with the minutiae of William’s life, they would at once have realised this, and would probably in the first instance have refrained from telling him the news.

But tell him, they did. And so William knew, almost as soon as the rest of the village, that the Slate family, whose patriach Sir Joshua Slate had recently received that honour for services to international diplomacy over many years in the Dutch East Indies, specifically the island of Java, had now returned to the house they had so long ago occupied.

 William’s attention was duly captured. For it was a Javanese cermonial dagger that was currently at the centre of his thoughts.

It had begun with Victor Jamieson. Victor Jamieson had an older brother who had recently been to the Far East in his capacity as a minor articled clerk in an international indiarubber concern. He had, in the course of his trip, purchased souvenirs for his family, including a highly decorated, very blunt object sold to him as a ‘Javanese ceremonial dagger’. The object had,  he had discovered on closer examination in his cabin on the voyage home, a serial number stamped onto it and the legend ‘Wong Ha Amusements, Tokyo, Made In Japan’, but work with his nail file had removed this evidence of his gullibility with his foreign currency, and it had been presented to Victor as a perfect original.

In possession of this trophy, Victor had naturally brought it to school, and spent happy hours bathing in the admiration of his peers. No one else had anything even resembling such a prize. Bows and arrows, cap guns and even William’s beloved pen-knife with two of the six ‘gadgets’ still not broken off, paled in comparison to the ceremonial dagger. William’s soul could not bear another week, he was sure, without at least the promise of a ceremonial dagger. Other boys felt this too, and in such sympathetic companionship, and with the strictly rationed ‘turns’ Victor had deigned to allow them all in break times, they all might have survived the experience.

But then came Hubert Lane. Hubert, who was William’s long time arch-enemy, had, in his lack of a Javanese cermonial dagger, appealed to his father. Mr Lane was the kind of man who felt that he could do best by his son, and his own prestige, by buying anything he wanted, at once, and in better condition than any other boy had. He had therefore, whilst in London, visited an antique and curio shop near Portobello Road and purchased, at some expense, an object he was assured was a Javanese ceremonial dagger. Certainly it seemed so to the boys at the village school when Hubert revealed it the next day with a flourish and a possessive sneer; it was almost exactly like Victor Jamieson’s, only twice as large.

Hubert did not allow ‘turns’. And if Victor had tempered his glory with some basic tactful restraint, Hubert did not whatsoever. His crowing over William and the Outlaws, and indeed the rest of the class, could not long by borne by boys of spirit. And such William certainly was. He placed all his focus of mind on obtaining, for himself, a Javanese ceremonial dagger.

But this was not straightforward. His first scheme – to fashion a similar item for himself by carving into the wooden handle of the breadknife – could not have been said to have come off. Despite careful work with his last remaining pen-knife blade, the final result was the snapping off of the handle altogether, and even he could not see, in the pieces, anything like the carving on the daggers he’d studied so longingly. Making the best of it, he had taken the blade to the sitting-room fire in order to heat it for bending into the correct ‘Javanese’ shape, but he was interrupted in this enterprise by an enraged Cook.

“’S’not my fault about the hearthrug,” William protested. “If she hadn’t of shrieked like that, I wouldn’t have dropped it and it wouldn’t have made the scorch mark at all, I was holding it very well with the tongs. People don’t jus’ drop things unless they’re shrieked at, or I don’t, at any rate.”

But his father was not interested in what ‘people’ did, and expressed his displeasure. Now, even William’s pen-knife had been confiscated from him, and he was forced to abandon all other schemes to manufacture the desired dagger.

The news, therefore, that the Slate family had recently returned from the island of Java, was like a light in a darkness to him.

“Oh yes,” his mother was saying. “A knighthood, you know, for his time in the Foreign Office. They say he would have stayed out there, but Mrs Slate wanted the children to be back in England, now they’re older. Such nice children, as I remember, Honeysuckle and Donald. They’ll be, oh, twenty and seventeen now, I think.”

“Honeysuckle Slate? Wasn’t that that girl Ethel was always traipsing round after as a kid?” Robert asked, with the supreme superiority of a boy two years older than his sister.

“Why yes, you were rather good friends with her, weren’t you Ethel?” Mrs Brown turned to her daughter, and was surprised to see that – rather than take her usual interest in village gossip – Ethel had coloured and was looking fiercely down at her toast. Ethel was heard to mutter that perhaps she might have been.

“Listen, about my party, I was thinking of the theme...” Robert began, but William could wait no longer.

“Are you going to call on Mrs Slate, Mother dear?” he asked, with what he imagined to be an innocent, polite smile.

‘Why, er, yes,” Mrs Brown reflected that children could be most confusing. William was the last of her offspring she ever expected to take a social interest. “But don’t interrupt your brother, darling.”

“Can I come with you when you visit, then?” William persisted. “Sorry Robert, I’m nearly finished speaking, I’ll be ever so quiet afterwards. Can I come, Mother?”

“If you like, dear,” said Mrs Brown. “Will you want to come, Ethel, and see your friend again?”

Ethel indicated that she was busy, or had a headache, or planned to, and Mrs Brown shrugged internally and allowed her attention to be claimed by Robert’s visions for his upcoming birthday party.

William was quiet. He was sunk in dreams of dagger ownership. Even a brief possesion – long enough to show off at school for one break time – would satisfy his pride. He was sure that he would only have to lay eyes on a dagger in the Slate’s house for a plan to come into his mind.

To his delight, Mrs Brown, astonished but nonetheless rather touched by William’s neighbourly attentiveness – she was not a suspicious woman – planned to pay a call the next day, and told him so. He went to bed in glad expectation of the dawn.

But with the dawning of the new day came the news that Mrs Brown had been struck down with a sudden ‘flu, of a type to keep her in bed for at least the rest of the weekend, and there could be no calls paid.

“I’m sorry too, William,” she said, weakly, from the sick bed in which he visited her, having brought an apple, in the belief it might effect an instant cure. She had paled and put this aside, but appreciated the thought. “I did happen to see Mrs Slate in town yesterday and mentioned I would be coming, and she made such an odd expression – always was a rather touchy woman, I think I recall, at least with me – and she’ll never be able to believe I’m ill now, it’s been so rapid. She’ll think I’m snubbing her or something like that, and it will all be awkward. I don’t know what to do.”

William looked quite horrified, and Mrs Brown was further touched by his new sensitivity to the social mores.

At that moment, Ethel came into the room with a hot lemon drink she had prepared for her mother.

“Ethel!” Mrs Brown cried. “Ethel, darling, could you bear to pay the call on the Slates for me? I can’t let Mrs Slate down. And you know them a little, after all, even if you were only fourteen when they left.”

“Oh, but Mother, I...” Ethel began. She stumbled back against her mother’s dresser. “I need to... I need to alter my dress for Robert’s party.”

“But that’s not for weeks, dear,” said Mrs Brown. “Please would you? I know I shall worry about it all day otherwise.”

“But, Mother...”

“Yes? Is there something wrong? Surely there isn't some reason you don’t want to see the Slates?”

“No! No of course not, it’s just... Well, I dare say I can do my dress later. I suppose I can go.”

“Thank you, darling. I do appreciate it.”

“Shall we go now, Ethel?” William asked eagerly.

He was expecting, despite his boundless optimism, to have to fight the ground again over his place on the calling party, and to receive from his sister some scathing opposition to his presence, or at least commentary on his appearance and suitability for seeing others. But, to his surprise, she brightened a little at his words and smiled.

“Oh yes, do come,” she said. “You can tell them about your school and your, your games, and anything you like. And then we certainly shan’t talk of anything else. Now, I must just change into my other blouse, and we can get it over with.”

William was bewildered, but disinclined to look a gift horse in the mouth, and not half an hour later brother and sister were walking together down the road towards ‘Catkins’.

“Ethel,” William asked, after they’d been walking a while. “Was the Slates the ones with the goldfish in the garden?”

Ethel blinked, as if returning from far away. “What? Oh, yes, they were. We used to fish for them with a net, didn’t we?”

“Yes, we did,” William was filled again with surprise at the recollection. He had long forgotten the period of his childhood, six or seven years earlier, when his sister – maths was not his strong point, but he could reckon that she’d been then only a little older than he was now – had taken him often with her to ‘Catkins’ to play with the Slate children. Donald had always disappeared to cricket club and tennis club and football club, but William and Ethel and Honeysuckle had occupied themselves happily with the Slates’ fish pond and the bonfire pile and the carved stones collected in Polynesia dotted about the flowerbeds.

Back then, his sister had been a short-haired, long-limbed bundle of energy, ready always to tuck her petticoats into her drawers and play games with the best of them. Honeysuckle, William remembered now, had even sometimes worn boys’ knickerbockers and was an ingenious inventor of escapades involving pirate captains, gangster barons, neolithic tribesmen and robber princes. Neither had been ‘girls’ to him, then, just friends. How odd to think that had been Ethel, once.

Ethel too seemed struck, she was walking more slowly along the road, biting her lip. “They were good days, weren’t they?” she said, slowly.

“Hope they’ve still got the pond.” William remarked. “Do you think she’ll remember how to make those nets out of string?”

“I don’t know what she’ll remember,” Ethel said, her voice a little shaky. “But those nets were just crochet, I can show you how to do that. Just like her, using that to make fishing nets,” and Ethel smiled, still staring into the half-distance.

It was a pity, William thought, that Honeysuckle Slate had ever left the village, if this was the effect she had on Ethel. Then his thoughts turned, as so often recently, to the pursuit of the ceremonial dagger.

As they walked the rest of the way, Ethel was still thinking of Honeysuckle Slate, and the last time they’d spoken. They’d been fourteen. After having been friends, casually and then more determinedly, since their first days at school, after years of living in each other’s pockets, of secret passwords and invisible ink, private worlds and gallivants over hill and dale, suddenly they had ceased to see each other. And that had not been because the Slates had left, but four months before it.

Ethel and H, they’d been – Honeysuckle never could stand her name – and they’d been always together, and then all at once, apart. At the time, Ethel had been sure it was all Honeysuckle’s fault, Honeysuckle’s unreasonability, but as the years had passed and her thoughts had unwilling reverted, over and over, to the break, she had felt unpleasant twinges of doubt. The rest of the Brown family might have forgotten about the Slates in their entirety, but Ethel had never been able to.

Perhaps Honeysuckle would herself be out when they called, Ethel told herself. That was the best she could hope for at this point. It was sure, at least, that William’s presence would draw the focus of the room. William’s presence generally did that.

But when they arrived – Mrs Slate smiling rather fixedly and ushering them into the parlour – William was uncharacteristically silent. Ethel was horrified to see him stting quietly and politely in his chair, feet neatly together, back straight, apparently listening to her attempts to make polite conversation as he stared at the far wall. Ethel took a look at the wall, but all she could see on it were some biliious watercolours of exotic scenes and some sort of hanging antiques without much interest to her, at least in her current harried state of mind.

For Mrs Slate had said her children were playing tennis in the garden, and would soon be joining them. She had not said this with any enthusiasm, but Ethel was scarcely aware of her tone, of anything but the impending entrance.

Sure enough, after ten awkward minutes in which Ethel explained that, yes, her mother was unwell and sent her apologies, and yes, her brother was still at home, and very well, and her father very well, and yes, she herself was still at home and very well too, the Slate siblings entered from the garden.

Donald Slate was a hearty, sportsmanlike seventeen year old, who greeted them with a hearty smile and a hearty handshake and then disappeared behind the newspaper and the cricket scores. Honeysuckle Slate looked, to William, really much as she ever had, with her hair still cropped – not curled or artfully waved but simply cut short, like a boy – and wearing a pair of shorts as part of her tennis whites, rather than the frothy little dresses favoured for the game by most of Ethel’s set.

William would, at that moment, have approved of most people, especially if they were Slates, for he had seen, on the wall of the parlour, not one but three daggers, of a large size and detailed decoration that made his heart sing. They were on chains, hanging merely from a nail, and removing them would be easy enough, if he could only think of a method to do so.

He did not, therefore, pay much attention to the Slates and Ethel for the rest of the visit. He was aware that greetings were exchanged;

“Hullo, Ethel,” said Honeysuckle.

“Hullo, H,” Ethel answered, and then, blushing, “Honeysuckle. Hullo.”

And more pleasantries undertaken;

“You look very elegant,” Honeysuckle said.

“You look.... the same,” Ethel stammered.

Honeysuckle turned away, frowning. “Yes, well, I dare say I do.”

But William’s attention was all for the daggers. He could see that Ethel was somewhat flustered, but after a brief thought he attributed that to Donald Slate, assuming that the cause of disquiet in young women is usually young men, a state of affairs he had accepted as a rule of the universe rather than understanding or approving.

“I suppose you can’t stay for lunch?” Mrs Slate said, which was the next item of conversation William was aware of. He turned eagerly to his sister. Prolonging the visit would help him come up with some pretext to at least handle the daggers. They were very big, and looked quite heavy, and concealing them about his person was unlikely to succeed, but they might perhaps fold, or he might be allowed an outright loan – William was, as it has been said, an eternal optimist.

But to his dismay Ethel, blushing again, stood up at once, and said that no, of course they couldn’t stay, that they must get back to their Mother in case they were needed, that they had stayed too long already and begged the Slates’ pardon.

“Not even...?” Honeysuckle Slate was beginning, but Mrs Slate, smiling icily, was shaking Ethel’s hand and saying it had been lovely to see her, and ushering them out, Ethel nodding and agreeing and trying to get into her coat and hat so quickly that it took her twice as long as usual. She had William’s hand in a firm grip and he was half-dragged out, still utterly daggerless.

But he had his quarry in sight, and he was now more determined than ever.

“Shall we go and see the Slates again today, Ethel?” he asked the next day, at breakfast. “Mrs Slate did say she’d love to see us again.”

“People don’t mean the next day when they say that,” Robert informed him sharply.

“But they did say so,” William insisted. “Donald said so,” he added with some cunning, casting a glance at Ethel.

She snorted. “Donald did not say so. Donald didn’t say two words the whole time we were there, unless it was his comment about the batting average at the Oval. Although heaven knows I’d have talked about that, rather than with that awful woman. I’d forgotten...”

“But Mrs Slate did say...” Wiilliam tried, but his father, irritated in his own quest for the digestion both of breakfast and the Sunday papers, laid it down as the word of God that when people asked you to call again soon, they never meant the next day.

Events had therefore reached an impasse.

“They’re simply brilliant daggers,” William told his Outlaws – Ginger, Douglas and Henry – as they gathered later that day in the Old Barn. “They’re as long as your arm, and gold and silver both, and sharp as anything, I bet.”

“Fat lot of good they are to us, if they’re stuck in that house,” Douglas pointed out, despondently.

“I’ll think of a way,” William promised them. “I will think of a way.”

But when they gathered again the next weekend, he had not yet thought of a way. William had a great deal of faith in his own burglary skills, but the Slates had – as well they might, having left their house without a guardian for several years – employed every modern form of security and had no small, unlocked windows or convenient trees to make use of. Besides, out and out robbery, of people who’d done him no wrong, did not sit happily with him.

He’d daily suggested repeating the visit to the Slates, but Mrs Brown was still recuperating, and Ethel had said she was busy. In fact she had, William had noticed, been out of the house far less than usual and had been ‘not at home’ to two of her regular swains when they’d paid their habitual evening calls for precious hours on the garden bench under the moon. William wondered if she was pining for Donald Slate. He had no idea what form this would take, but his sister had never really been logically explicable to him.

“I’m still thinkin’,” he protested to his followers now. “Got to think, don’t I? How am I ‘sposed to have a plan unless I’ve time to think? That’s the problem of sending boys to school and lessons and all that every day you don’t have time to think.”

It was not one of his more totally persuasive arguments, and the mood in the Old Barn was becoming increasingly mutinous, when there was a knock at what, in the Old Barn, passed for a door.

“Who goes there?” Ginger called.

“And what does Who do there?” William added, keen to assert his control of the situation.

“Friend!” The voice called.  It was a young, female voice. “I wish to have a an audience with your chief.”

“I’m that,” William said at once. “Come forth and be heard, and mind there’s a hole where that puddle is.”

Honeysuckle Slate stepped into the barn. She was dressed in what looked like a long, tweed skirt but was actually what William would have called trousers and what the fashion world – and she herself, defending them to her mother – would call ‘culottes’. Her hair was tied up in a green scarf with a pencil held behind her ear, and she had an army-style knapsack on her back. From it she proceeded to bring forth five large chunks of ginger cake, wrapped in paper.

“Peace offering,” she said, passing them out. “For safe passage.”

The Outlaws were impressed. Their experience of young women had been either of dazzzling, ethereal beauties to be worshipped and adored, or illogical and irritating forces to be avoided at all costs. Honeysuckle Slate was neither. She was just, as William put to the others later, “a normal sort of actual person”.

“Call me H,” Honeysuckle told them, as they sat, eating companionably. “I suppose you boys know about the smugglers’ hole?”

They looked up at her blankly.

Grinning, she stood up and, to their amazement, made straight for one of the wooden struts holding up the barn’s hayloft, which she began expertly to shimmy up to reach the platform above. The Outlaws had not been to that level since the loss of the old ladder to woodworm some two years earlier, and now felt that to have been sheer weak-willed cowardice on their part. 

Now in the hayloft, she proceeded to the back wall and, behind some planks and sacking not disturbed in many years - and without, it might be added, any regard for dust or spiders getting onto her person - revealed a narrow recess in the stone, which she illuminated to her watchers below with a fine electric torch from her pocket. 

"Smuggler's hole," she said proudly. "Honest truth it is. It's in the library books and everything." 

"Gosh," said William, and the others, and they watched now in great admiration as she shimmied back down the beam to the them. 

"How did you know that was there?" Henry asked. 

"Oh, I used to come here a lot when I was younger," Honeysuckle said. "Climbing and hiding and getting muddy. Your sister didn't use to half catch it when she went home," she said, turning to face William in particular. "For my part, I think my mother had given up on my long before that. I'm sorry she was so rude to you the other day, by the way. She'd heard your sister was married, and wasn't best please to find otherwise."

"Ethel? Getting muddy?" Ginger asked, in tones of astonishment. 

Honeysuckle smiled, but rather oddly. "You bet," she said. 

"She did," William agreed. "She was a bit different then, more int'rested in the outdoors and games and things. I don't know why anyone would stop bein' int'rested in 'em, but she was before."

"Now William," Honeysuckle said. "That's what I need to talk to you about. About your sister. You see, Mother isn't going to return that call, not any time soon, because... well, she's not going to. And I don't want to... I'm sure your mother told your sister to call on us, you see, and I'd like to know if she'd actually like to see me."

"Oh, she prob'ly would," William said confidently, keen to move the conversation back to smugglers. "She prob'ly would. She's always seein' people. Although," he felt compelled by honesty to add, "she's not seen many people this weekly, actually."

"Does she have a special friend?" Honeysuckle asked, looking at him, wide-eyed. 

William, thinking of Dora Clavis and some of the other local beauties vaguely tolerated by his sister, and the various devoted swains she always seemed faintly bored by, shook his head, for no one seemed to come under that title. In fact, now he thought about it, he'd never thought of his sister having friends, not like he himself did, other than in that past recollection of her time with H. 

"Did she say anything about me to you, after you visited us? Or before?" Honeysuckle asked. 

William contorted his face, as one delving into the darkest depths of memory. He'd been thinking about the dagger. "She said it was good in the old days when we all went fishing," he said, slowly. "She said she didn't know if you remembered how to make fishing nets out of string."

He was surprised to find these not very exciting words taken in eagerly by Honeysuckle, who smiled a little and nodded her head. "Well, that's not all bad, not all bad at all," she said. "Oh, don't mind me, it's just... Could you help me?"

William had warmed tremendously to Honeysuckle, but he was conscious of the duties of the hour and there were at that moment hisses of suggestion from the other Outlaws in case he had forgotten. "I'd be happy to help you," he said, "but if I do, could I please borrow one of your Javanese sermonial daggers? If it's not too much trouble."

"Oh, daggers is it?" Honeysuckle grinned. "Listen, I've a dagger of my own from Java. A real _kris_ , with the scabbard and everything, not the nonsense they sell at tourist bazaars. It's still got blood on it."

The Outlaws' eyes glowed as might those of men beholding Aladdin's cave of treasure.

"If you can help me," Honeysuckle said, 'you can _have_ that dagger for your own, forever and ever amen."

They assured her eagerly that they would do anything, anything at all.

~

It was the weekend following the meeting in the barn that the Browns were hosting Robert's birthday party. Usually, this would have been a delight fully shared in by Ethel, not least in the area of attempting to ensure William's total exclusion from the event, but Ethel had remained, since the visit to the Slates, in her strange, quiet, retired state and took only minimal interest in the party plans.

"She'll be pining over some chap," Robert said with an air of amused indulgence which he had been trying to cultivate, in the belief it made him appear sophisticated. He was himself, at that very moment, trying to compose further verses in a sonnet he was writing for Gaynor Garworth, but he saw no resemblance between his situation and what he imagined of his sister's. To Robert, Gaynor Garworth was not 'a' girl, she was The girl, the one and only, and so she had been to him for nearly six weeks, which was in the scale of Robert's affairs no small feat.

In fact, one of the few things Ethel had had to say about Robert's party was that she hoped the Garworth girl wasn't invited - Ethel took as little interest in Robert's affairs as he did in hers - and was put out to discover that she was, instead, the guest of honour, around whose preferred gown the entire colour scheme was being planned, that she might look at her best.

"Anyhow, I thought you liked Gaynor," Robert said, irritated. "Didn't you know each other at school? She was telling me the other day that she had always remembered me - always remembered me, mark you! - from when she'd come here and teach you how to do your hair and make-up and about dresses and things. She said you were a terrible tomboy then - do you know, I'd completely forgotten that? But you were, weren't you? You and that Slate girl, a right pair of rapscallions! Do you remember when you got into the orchard at the Hall and tried to fight the War of the Roses, or whatever it was, with the butcher's boy and his friends, using the windfall apples? You had apple mush in your ears, even."

"It was the Battle of Agincourt, actually," Ethel said, curtly, and rose from the table. 

"Can the Slate children come, Robert?" Mrs Brown asked, and Ethel froze where she stood. 

"No, they've both sent their excuses," Robert held out an envelope from the folder where he'd been collecting party correspondence. "I don't know why you bothered me to ask them, they've never been my friends, after all."

"Can I see that?" Ethel asked, and took the letter. In it, Donald wrote that he was sorry, he had a cricket match he'd long been assigned to play at a house party in Kent that weekend, and a further note from Honeysuckle merely stated that she regretted she could not attend, without further comment or elaboration. Despite the brevity of this communication, Ethel kept hold of it and sat reading it repeatedly for some minutes, to the irritation of William who wished to take a look at it himself. He couldn't think why Honeysuckle, if she wanted to see Ethel, hadn't agreed to come. 

"After all, she'll be at the party," William pointed out himself later that day, having gone to Catkins to make his case. "Couldn't you write again and say you forgot which day, and you can come?"

He was sitting on the Catkins garden wall, watching Honeysuckle mend a puncture in her bicycle tyre, a procedure he always found fascinating but was rarely allowed to watch - Robert claimed his presence was 'off-putting'. 

"I know, I know," Honeysuckle said, sighing. "But I was invited to that party by Robert, or rather, really by your mother. I've no idea if she wants me there. And I don't want to... to trap her, or embarrass her, if she'd rather not talk to me, not in front of lots of people."

"Doesn't make much sense to me," William muttered, but with a philosophical air; the complications of the lives of his elders rarely made much sense to him. He was sad to find this distinct trait of grown-up-ness even in the amiable H.

"I know, enjoy that while it lasts," Honeysuckle told him. She stood up, hands on hips. "I was going into Hadley to look at some puppies. I want a dog, the place isn't right without one and if... well, I want one, anyway. Do you want to come and help me pick? You can stand on the back of the bike."

William accompanied her with joy, and spent an afternoon of bliss helping her decide between several different puppies at the local Dog Pound. When they returned to the village, covered in dog hair and happiness, his day might have been serene thereafter, were it not for the fact that they passed on the road Hubert Lane and some of the Laneites, Hubert brandishing his dagger and ready to yell taunts after William at once for lacking possession of such an object. 

At Catkins, William made so bold as to ask if he might merely look at the ceremonial dagger that was to be his.

Honeysuckle sighed. "It's not that I don't trust you, William, but this really, really matters to me. I need it to matter to you too, do you see?"

William was prepared to accept this, but couldn't help remarking, "What's so special about ole' Ethel, anyway?"

She looked at him. "Do you have a friend?" she asked. "Someone who you'd like to know for the rest of your life?"

"Ginger," William answered readily.

"Well, can you imagine... No, you couldn't," she shook her head.

"I can imagine lots of things!" William protested.

"But some things you don't know till you get older," she told him. "And sometimes, it happens that you find out a lot of things at once in a sort of mixture and a mess, and you don't always say what you want to or do what you mean to, because it's all rather confusing. You see, I don't know if Ethel doesn't like me any more, or if she just thinks I don't like her, or whether..." she sighed again. "That's why I'm asking you to do this. Just to wait and see if she mentions me, and then simply tell her that I've seen you, and I've said I'd like to see her, but only if there's no one else in the room. I can't write anything down, and I can't... she might say something else if there are other people around, than what she means. I'm not very respectable, I don't think."

William, frowning, had long ago in the explanation been lost.

Honeysuckle laughed a little. "Don't worry about it. Just please do as I ask and when you have, whether she says she'd like to see me or not, you'll have your dagger."

"I 'spose it's a girl thing," William opined.

"You could say that."

"But you're not very like a girl, mostly," William protested, intending only to pay a deep compliment.

Now she broke into a grin. "Too right! And you only have to ask my mother for proof. She thought coming back to England might make a young lady out of me, well ---ed if it does!" She stopped and sighed. "Thank you for your help, William, I'm sure we picked the right dog. Now you'd better be home, I think, or you'll miss your tea."

Back at William's house, the preparations for the party, which was the next evening, were in full swing. The housemaid and Mrs Brown had been carefully putting up decorations - the party was, at Gaynor's direction, on a 'snow' theme, the idea being that this, in August, would be daring and chic and amusing - only to have Robert come in and survey their efforts with cries of horror, and the protestation that it wasn't a kids' party and he'd be ruined forever in the eyes of everyone unless it were all changed and improved. Duly, under his painstaking direction, the entire room was stripped and started over again, until it looked almost exactly as it had in the first place.  

Ethel remained unusually quiet at tea.

"Are you sure you're feeling quite alright, darling?" her mother asked her, solicitously.

"I'm well, thank you," Ethel said, attempting a smile. "Just a bit of a wretched headache, and with this party, you know."

"You don't have to come down for it," Robert assured her, rather too quickly. She narrowed her eyes at him.

"Devil of a thing," Mr Brown said, as if no conversation were already in progress, or as if his comment were relevant to it. "I ran into Joshua Slate in London today, and the chap told me he's planning to get back out East as soon as he can, next year if possible. Came all the way back here just to decide he likes it better there! And then he told me that that girl, what's her name? Hyacinth? That she's got some sort of job in Malaya and is disappearing before the autumn, even. I didn't think they took single women up for posts abroad, but she's done it, apparently."

There was a loud noise, and they all turned. Ethel had misplaced her tea-cup on its saucer, and spilt her tea all over the table-cloth, she was blushing furiously and patting at the spill with a napkin. Mrs Brown rang the bell, and the maid came to clear up; the rest of them finished their own cups and got down from the table, William carefully pocketing the slice of cake he had been intending to eat next, were it not for the abrupt conclusion.

By the time he turned his attention back to the room, Ethel had gone. He felt that he was in a dilemma. Honeysuckle Slate wanted him to tell Ethel, should Ethel ever talk about Honeysuckle, that Honeysuckle would like to see her. But Ethel seemed determined never to speak about anything, any more, and if Honeysuckle was leaving England soon that put a sad horizon on his chances of securing for himself a ceremonial dagger.

He decided, therefore, to pursue Ethel to her room, in the hope that Honeysuckle's name would arise.

Ethel was lying on her bed, fists clenched under her, breathing deeply and trying to keep herself under control. She had no right to care what Honeysuckle Slate did, she was reminding herself. And no good reason to, either. The things that one thought, and did, as a child - well, practically a child, a young person, anyway - bore no relation to real life. Probably if they spent much time in each other's company now they would not get on. No doubt Honeysuckle would be much as she ever had been and Ethel... Ethel missed that, missed that so very much. 

When visiting the Slates, when H had come into the room, she'd felt as if every part of her had been heated and glowing, desperate for and desperately afraid of H's gaze. She'd forgotten that feeling, started to convince herself it had never been quite like that, or that at least it was just the same with the young men who visited her now, that they too could provoke every bit as much feeling.

The knock at her bedroom door annoyed and relieved her at the same time. She sat up, trying to compose herself, and called for her visitor to enter.

It was William. He had a determined air about him that on another occasion might have set her on her guard.

"Hullo, Ethel," he said. "I hope you're feeling better. I was jus' thinkin' about what Father said, about the Slates."

"Yes?" Ethel picked her manicure set from her bedside table and started idly filing at her nails. "What about them?"

"I was jus' thinkin' about them, and the old days when we saw them, and all of that."

William's scheme was a simple one. He would not mention Honeysuckle Slate's name, but he would keep approaching it until Ethel did. Then he could give his message and, duty discharged, receive his prize.

To his dismay, Ethel did not launch into any sort of speech at once, but sat back on her bed and sighed deeply.

"William," she said. "Is there something that you want, just now, more than anything?"

"A Javanese ceremonial dagger," he said at once, just in case this was in the way of an offer.

But she gave him a sad smile. "And do you want it because you want it, or do you want it because of what the others at school, and your friends, want and have?"

He frowned, unable to see any distinction between the two options.

"When you're a girl, William," she continued, "there comes a point when lipstick and make-up and hair and, oh, dresses and nylons and boyfriends and things, they're all a bit like your Javanese dagger. I mean, because everyone at school, and everyone you meet, either sees you have them or thinks nothing of you."

"But lipstick an' nylons an' those things," William said, confused, "aren't any fun. I don't see why people pay money for 'em, when you can get facepaints a lot cheaper, if that's all you want to do."

Ethel still had that distant smile. "That's really rather what I said to Gaynor Garworth, once. She laughed at me. She told me not to be a fool, and that I'd look much better with my hair curled and wearing something half-decent. She really was awfully pretty, Gaynor, then. I suppose..." she laughed, as if in surprise. "I suppose that had something to do with it actually. But you don't know what on earth I mean, do you?"

William shook his head. "Why'd anyone want lipstick, when you can get 'em easy in Hadley?" He asked, "But with a dagger, they're hard to get hold of, so they're nat'rally more excitin'." He thought they were straying somewhat from the topic. "I just passed the Slates' house today," he said, truthfully. 

"Oh yes?" Ethel sat up. But she had not yet actually mentioned Honeysuckle and William's instructions from Honeysuckle had been very specific: he must wait until Ethel mentioned her to speak. 

William sighed. "I saw Donald," he said, still truthfully. "He was putting linseed oil on his cricket bat."

"I don't care two pins about what Donald Slate does!" Ethel cried. "Get that through your head! It's not Donald that I..." she stopped, and took a deep breath. "Look, I think I'll have a nap just now. And please, promise me you won't mention this conversation to anyone. Anyone. Alright?"

William, who had no intention of attempting to reproduce the - to him - deeply irrational stream of consciousness he'd just heard, promised readily enough. As her bedroom door closed behind him, he thought he heard a sound strangely like a sob. 

William was a caring boy at heart, and a fairly astute one. He did not understand the situation between Ethel and H - indeed, he could even perceive that they didn't quite want him to understand - but he was used to not understanding things. He liked Honeysuckle and just at the moment, he had to admit to himself, he was feeling quite fond of Ethel. He could see that both of them were unhappy because they wanted to talk to each other, and could not, for some reason, bring themselves to be the first to start talking. Even without his personal stake in the matter in the form of the promised ceremonial dagger, he would have wanted to help them. 

He was facing a dilemma. He knew, from both girls, that they wanted to talk. But he was bound on his oath not to mention this to either of them under current circumstances. He felt, also, that there was a complexity in their feelings that he might not be equal to conveying accurately. Very well then: they must be engineered to talk directly to each other, and jolly well sort it out for themselves. 

Once settled on a course of action, William's was not a mind which brooked much delay. There was the party to be held at his house the next day, and so, he reasoned, at this party they must meet. He awaited further inspiration from the gods. 

The gods were obliging. At dinner that evening, Robert lamented loudly on the topic of his 'snow prince' costume. It was too white, not pale enough, too light, too sheer, too decorated, not decorated enough in the right way, and generally absolutely wrong. It would disgrace him utterly before Gaynor. He would have to consign it to the dustcart and wear his suit at this rate, when she had specifically wanted them all to dress to the theme. She would be offended, and his life would be over. 

Mrs Brown nodded patiently and promised to look at the hem of the cloak the next day, but by this point William had already been excused from the table, a smile playing at his lips. 

~

Robert's party guests had been invited for seven o'clock. They began to arrive quite promptly - it was warm, and warmer if one was dressed as a snow prince or princess, and they all fancied getting at the drinks cupboard early - but were somewhat put out to find their host was not at the door to greet them. Instead there stood Mrs Brown and a pale, weary-looking Ethel, shaking hands and kissing cheeks and expressing how delighted they were to see everybody, and gesturing them on into the sitting room.

At a quarter to eight, imagining herself fashionably late and eagerly awaiting the anxious inquiries of her beau, Gaynor Garworth arrived. But there was no beau present to embrace her. 

"Robert says he's ever so sorry, and he'll be down shortly," Ethel explained, giving her the lightest of hugs. "Costume trouble, it seems."

"Well really, he's had long enough to prepare, I gave him the designs weeks ago!" Gaynor huffed, annoyed. "And I did so want us to enter together, King and Queen of the frozen lands. I think I shall wait here for him to come downstairs, if you say he won't be very long now." There was a suggestion in her voice that, were he very long, it would be the worse for him. 

The two girls - Mrs Brown had gone into the sitting room to attend to the buffet - stood in silence in the hall. 

"I can't believe that Slate girl is back in the village, can you Ethel?" Gaynor asked, eyes narrowed. "Didn't I warn you about her? I told you she'd turn out no good, not a girl a nice young woman would ever want to be associated with, and I was right. She really might have stayed in China, or wherever it was. She might be a veritable feminine beauty out there, for all we know!" She laughed at her own wit. "But she'd not appreciate that, anyway. Not at all a... a natural woman. I hope she didn't force her company on you again? She was so pathetic, when we were kids, following after you asking if you wanted to play at pirates. Pirates! And you saying you were very sorry, but you had an appointment at the hairdressers and didn't want to look like you'd been dragged through a hedge backwards anymore. Oh how we laughed."

If Gaynor had been looking at Ethel as she spoke, she might have noticed the rapid reddening of the other girl's cheek or the furious gleam coming into her eyes, and if Ethel had been looking at anything other than Gaynor's nasty smirk, she might have seen the figure coming through the open door and pausing to remove its overshoes by the coat-rack, but as it was, neither saw anything. 

"And then she..." Gaynor began, and Ethel descended like a Fury. 

"I'd rather talk to H," Ethel cried, "than to a horrid, spiteful, catty, superficial girl like you! Or like me! Because you made me just the same! H was my best friend, the best friend I've ever had, and you tried to make me ashamed of her! I never said goodbye when she left for the Indies, because I was so worried about what you'd think, you and girls like you. I even began to think she was unreasonable not to behave as you did, as we did - she who never did anyone any harm or asked them to be anything but what they were! I'm ashamed of myself now, alright. She was everything to me and I lost her and now, out of fear, I'll lose her again, when she's the only person I've ever actually been happy around! And all because of a mean old sour-faced bitch like you!"

Gaynor, enraged, turned round to see who had witnessed this verbal onslaught upon her person and saw at once a figure, of about Robert's height, dressed in a 'snow prince' outfit (with mask) which she had personally designed for Robert, in order to match her dress. To this figure, she flew. 

"Oh darling!" Gaynor cried, clinging on. "Darling, can you mean to let her speak to me like that?"

"You know," said the figure, in a voice which would have been high-pitched for Robert even in his most anxious moments. "I rather think I might."

And the mask came away, revealing the grinning face of Honeysuckle Slate, who seemed torn between laughing and holding her breath, darting glances at Ethel at every moment. 

Gaynor screamed, and fled into the sitting room. A confused version of events began to spread round the party which, having until now been rather bored, seized on the drama with delight. Robert, alerted by the noise, descended downstairs. He had been in the process of gluing cotton-wool 'snow' onto his best suit, and the end result, rather than suggesting a prince of an arctic waste (chicly and ironically in August), was more reminiscent of a bad infestation of moth. 

"Gaynor!" he cried. "Gaynor, my outfit was stolen! I'm here now, Gaynor!" He disappeared into the throng.

Outside the house, all was quiet. Having slipped into the street, Honeysuckle and Ethel were standing together in the pink evening light. 

"But I never said it," Ethel was saying, reading the note which Honeysuckle had handed over. It said, in William's unmistakeable penmanship:

_'she woold lik to see u at party tonite. here is costoom to were'_

"I never," Ethel was still saying, but then looked up and caught sight of the expression on Honeysuckle's face. "Oh, but I am so glad you came," she said, softly. "So very, very glad."

"Ethel," said Honeysuckle, delighted, "I couldn't help overhearing. Oh you wonderful girl," and she took up Ethel's hand and quickly brought it to her lips. "You don't mind?" She asked, a little shyly. "But you were quite, quite wonderful."

"Oh H," Ethel said. "I don't mind at all. I... I never minded. I always liked it. Do let's...let's go to the Old Barn, and really talk."

They set off together along the road. Honeysuckle had not yet let go of Ethel's hand.

~

There were retributions to be visited on William, of course, the next day. 

"But Robert said he didn't want it!" William pointed out. "He went on an' on an' on an' on about how it was going to have to go to the dust cart and he could never wear it! He said he didn't want the costume!"

But this was to no avail. Both William's father and Robert expressed their displeasure. Robert, however, was not as displeased as might be imagined. He had at his party, in the wake of Gaynor's haughty and very final exit, met a delightful young girl who had thought his 'snowman tramp' outfit 'perfectly dear'. They were to have tea together later in the week. 

"I never told you I wanted H to come to the party," Ethel said to William later, not very crossly. "You mustn't fib, you know."

"But I never said _you_ wanted her there," William pointed out, his expression all innocence. "I wrote that _she_ said, and you both thought I meant you but I meant Mother. Mother did want H there, because you said and Robert said and H said that Mother was the one who invited her and Donald in the first place."

Ethel raised her eyebrow at him, but couldn't help smiling. She was not in a mood to be annoyed with anything or anyone. She and H had had a long talk that night. Apologies and regrets and a few tears had made way for confessions and declarations and delicious discoveries. H had kissed her hand again, and kissed her elsewhere besides. Ethel was in love, and about to embark on a voyage to Malaya with the only person who mattered to her, to live in peace as they chose. She was content, and eager to see others so. 

"Well anyway, H sent this for you," Ethel said, bringing out a paper package. "I'm not sure you'll learn anything from all this, but for goodness sakes at least don't take your fingers off with it. You wouldn't want to spoil the actual sacrificial goat blood that's already there," she added, grinning. 

William beamed at her, and his heart leapt for delight within him. For there, in his hands, was the real Javanese ceremonial dagger. 

"And here," Ethel reached into her bag again, and gave him - he blinked, unable to believe it - two ten-shilling notes. "I'll have to change my money anyway. Buy some cough drops or some allsorts or something. And I'll show you how to crochet nets before I go, remind me. There are some girl things worth knowing, and I must get that in at least before my ship leaves."

William was momentarily struck. "I'll miss you, Ethel," he said, quite whole-heartedly. And then, brightening. "I say, can I have your bedroom to keep snakes in?"

She laughed, and told him to take it up with their parents first, and to get away out so she could keep packing. 

William raced over the fields to the Old Barn, where the Outlaws awaited him. He had a bulging bag of gobstoppers and humbugs in one hand, and a glistening, brilliant, sharp, blood-stained Javanese ceremonial dagger in the other. Man, he was sure, could have no greater joy than himself at this hour.

"How ever did you get it?" the Outlaws asked him.

"Well," William said slowly. "I'm not sure 'xactly how it happened. But I can show you the noise Gaynor Garworth made. Look, Ginger, you be Robert carryin' on, and I'll be Gaynor and Henry and Douglas be guests flappin' and I'll show you it all."

~ 

 


End file.
